Army steps up Mac orders; security fix reissued; X-Factor lawsuit?

[AppleInsider]

The US Army is shifting more of its IT infrastructure towards the Mac to thwart hacking attempts. Also, Apple has relaunched its latest security update to remedy a new flaw, and a talent show may file suit against Apple for an iTunes outage.

US Army expands Mac usage

While the American military often focuses on buying the lowest-cost systems with the most software, recent security threats have prompted a new turn towards the Mac in the Army, according to a new report by Forbes.

The military branch began shifting away from a nearly Windows-only environment as soon as late 2005, when General Steve Boutelle warned that a homogenous operating system environment would expose the Army to large-scale hacking attempts.

However, these efforts will ramp up in February 2008 when a new program from Thursby Software gives Macs access to the military's Common Access Cards system, opening up use of the systems to a wider swath of the Army's IT network. About 1,000 new Macs are installed every six months at current purchase rates.

About 20,000 of the government body's 700,000 systems are Macs, including a selection of Xserve clusters; despite being hard-hit by cracking attempts, many of these servers simply 'shrug off' these attempts as the code is designed to break Windows systems, according to Army enterprise IT head Lieutenant Colonel C.J. Wallington.

Apple issues Security Update 2007-009 1.1

Just days after releasing the initial 2007-009 Security Update, Apple has introduced version 1.1 of the fix.

Available for Leopard (35.6MB) as well as Tiger in PowerPC-only (15.9MB) and Universal Binary (27.4MB) formats, the new iteration primarily resolves an issue with Safari crashing on visiting websites with specific code.

The patch otherwise remains the same as before and primarily mends issues with Adobe web plugins and web scripting.

UK talent show considering lawsuit for iTunes outage?

A reported outage for Apple's iTunes Store in the UK may have led to missed sales and a potential lawsuit, according to a claim by Britain's daily paper The Sun.

Although the music service is said to have coped with extremely popular releases in the past, with X-Factor talent show winner Leona Lewis having sold 50,000 songs within an hour after it became available, a flood of traffic to iTunes after Scottish singer Leon Jackson won the latest competition allegedly crashed Apple's servers just after midnight, preventing anyone from downloading music until it was resolved 15 hours later.

X-Factor co-host Simon Cowell, who also oversees shows such as American Idol, is purportedly "hugely disappointed" that Apple may have deprived Jackson of vital early sales and may file a legal complaint against the Cupertino, Calif.-based firm for its inability to cope with demand.

An Apple spokesperson has declined comment, The Sun claims.

[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]

[bobmarksdale]

Ah... that security update threw me, I installed the first one, and then like 25 minutes later the second one popped up and I was confused. I thought the first one failed and there could be something wrong with my computer... lingering after the previous ones I had with quicktime..., but that's not important anymore.

And wouldn't the army be the last people concerned about costs **coughcough, and more concerned about power and stability? Apparently they are coming around now.

[Samnuva]

Way to go army... They've seen the light of mac! (now if they'll only see the light of withdrawl...)

Does this lawsuit have any claim whatsoever? Being down for several hours is not a crime, last i checked.

[TheMadMilkman]

Originally Posted by Samnuva

Way to go army... They've seen the light of mac! (now if they'll only see the light of withdrawl...)

Does this lawsuit have any claim whatsoever? Being down for several hours is not a crime, last i checked.

A civil lawsuit has nothing to do with crime.

[aegisdesign]

Originally Posted by TheMadMilkman

A civil lawsuit has nothing to do with crime.

Whereas Leon Jackson winning X-Factor was.

[Marvin]

Originally Posted by aegisdesign

Whereas Leon Jackson winning X-Factor was.

That's the thing, people are complaining they couldn't provide vital votes because the phone lines were down and now Cowell wants to sue Apple because the servers were down.

It's not as if the people who wanted the song would have changed their mind after a single day. If I wanted a song yesterday and couldn't get it until today, I'm not going to suddenly think 'hey, I don't want the song any more'.

However, I remember them saying on the show about being able to get the winner's songs off itunes so I guess if they are publicizing itunes and Apple are not delivering a return on that, it doesn't look good. Not worth a lawsuit but perhaps a goodwill gesture such as keeping the songs on the itunes front page for longer.

[ncee]

Originally Posted by Marvin

That's the thing, people are complaining they couldn't provide vital votes because the phone lines were down and now Cowell wants to sue Apple because the servers were down.

It's not as if the people who wanted the song would have changed their mind after a single day. If I wanted a song yesterday and couldn't get it until today, I'm not going to suddenly think 'hey, I don't want the song any more'.

However, I remember them saying on the show about being able to get the winner's songs off itunes so I guess if they are publicizing itunes and Apple are not delivering a return on that, it doesn't look good. Not worth a lawsuit but perhaps a goodwill gesture such as keeping the songs on the itunes front page for longer.

I think they should issue everyone who tried to download the song, a $100.00 credit …

[irnchriz]

Originally Posted by ncee

I think they should issue everyone who tried to download the song, a $100.00 credit …

I think they should issue all of those who bought the song a bullet to the brain.

[bullrat]

I'm glad to see the Army getting Macs -- but I guess this means we can definitely expect more viruses written for Macs now. Ah, well...

[WJHMH]

Originally Posted by bullrat

I'm glad to see the Army getting Macs -- but I guess this means we can definitely expect more viruses written for Macs now. Ah, well...

Good point.

[drjjones]

Kind of funny that i just update my computer last night and visited this site this morning and while on this article at this site my safari crashed . Sure glad they fixed this What i joke.

[monstrosity]

Originally Posted by irnchriz

I think they should issue all of those who bought the song a bullet to the brain.

lol!! agreed

[JeffDM]

A lawsuit might be in order if the event's organizers had a service contract with Apple that specified a certain level of uptime and accessibility during and after the event, otherwise, no.

[Samnuva]

Originally Posted by bullrat

I'm glad to see the Army getting Macs -- but I guess this means we can definitely expect more viruses written for Macs now. Ah, well...

For the record, if the army had kept it quiet, both them AND us would be more secure

[solipsism]

I think there is another company that runs iTunes in the UK, making this lawsuit less likely to succeed if they are indeed going driectly after Apple, Inc.


As for the claims that more viruses will spread up because the US Army is purchasing under 200 Macs and XServes a month is pretty poor logic when you consider the 22M+ Macs and XServes currently out there with potentially easier security to circumvent as the average user will not lock down their machine as securely as the military.

[aplnub]

Originally Posted by Samnuva

For the record, if the army had kept it quiet, both them AND us would be more secure

What a double edge sword freedom of the press and the army is these days. Sometimes I wonder who the frack makes these lame brain decisions.

[Abster2core]

Originally Posted by bullrat

I'm glad to see the Army getting Macs -- but I guess this means we can definitely expect more viruses written for Macs now. Ah, well...

To get more, you have to have at least one.

[JeffDM]

Originally Posted by Abster2core

To get more, you have to have at least one.

I think there have been some, but I think they were proof of concept, and not released. A small number of trojans might have gotten out, but didn't spread. I think the grand total has been fewer than ten.

[tuneman07]

I need to get in on these Apple lawsuits- just the other day I was late for work because something was up with my Ipod and it wouldn't let me put new music on it. Now I have less chance of getting a promotion, this could have cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars in the long run, I want my money !

[Abster2core]

Originally Posted by JeffDM

I think there have been some, but I think they were proof of concept, and not released. A small number of trojans might have gotten out, but didn't spread. I think the grand total has been fewer than ten.

I believe you think wrong.

As posted on Apple's site, "By the end of 2005, there were 114,000 known viruses for PCs. In March 2006 alone, 850 new threats were detected against Windows. Zero for Mac."

And still none to date.

However, there have been a couple of headlines posted like, 'first Mac virus developed,…' all turned out to be false rumors.

[solipsism]

Originally Posted by Abster2core

As posted on Apple's site, "By the end of 2005, there were 114,000 known viruses for PCs. In March 2006 alone, 850 new threats were detected against Windows. Zero for Mac."

And still none to date.

The sentence you quote above is marketing slight-of-hand .

Apple states:
• "114,000 known viruses for PCs" (this states there have been x many total known PC viruses up to the end of 2005. It doesn't state how many are for Windows XP and how many have been patched. But that is fine, it's showing Windows being a more susceptible OS)
• "In March 2006, 850 new threats were detected against Windows" (Now for some reason they skip the first two months of 2006 and state how many threats were discovered for Windows. Threats aren't necessarily viruses. We, as Mac users, should be well aware of the difference as we constantly protect and patch against potential threats but haven't needed to take extra measures to detect and remove viruses)
•*"Zero for Mac" (With the previous sentence referring to a one month time frame Apple could only be referring to that month while implying a much longer time frame)

[Abster2core]

Originally Posted by solipsism

The sentence you quote above is marketing slight-of-hand .

Apple states:
• "114,000 known viruses for PCs" (this states there have been x many total known PC viruses up to the end of 2005. It doesn't state how many are for Windows XP and how many have been patched. But that is fine, it's showing Windows being a more susceptible OS)
• "In March 2006, 850 new threats were detected against Windows" (Now for some reason they skip the first two months of 2006 and state how many threats were discovered for Windows Threats aren't necessarily viruses. We, as Mac users, should be well aware of the difference as we constantly protect and patch against potential threats but haven't needed to take extra measures to detect and remove viruses)
•*"Zero for Mac" (With the previous sentence referring to a one month time frame Apple could only be referring to that month while implying a much longer time frame)

Anyway you look at it, it is still zero for Mac.

[solipsism]

Originally Posted by Abster2core

Anyway you look at it, it is still zero for Mac.

I don't disagree with you; I'm merely giving a possible reason why Apple didn't say "Zero [Mac] OS X viruses."

Why someone would be using System 7 is beyond me but I wonder if Apple used such a unique way to state this is because the OS X qualifier may be too confusing to understand for the average user and without adding it or some other qualifier Apple would libelous for false advertising. If my parents don't get it then I figure the majority of people are probably in the same boat. People know Mac but they don't always know OS X or how Mac and OS X differ from one another.
...just a thought.

[Vox Barbara]

Originally Posted by bullrat

I'm glad to see the Army getting Macs -- but I guess this means we can definitely expect more viruses written for Macs now. Ah, well...

Well, this is probably the other side of the coin.
Someone else in this thread mentioned, that both
sides should have kept that particular deal under the
hood. True. Now anybody can see the huge yellow sign
that says "Please attack me, I am here."

[bobo28]

Maybe it was one of these yet undeveloped Mac virus's that took down the British itunes ? Lets name it the "good taste in music virus " !

[danwaters]

Hellzapoppin!!!! This story's got it all! Server crashes! Teenage girls unable to buy crap song for a while! Millionaire TV tosser makes vague suggestion of legal action!
Thank God for your soaraway super Sun!